Miami commissioners use AT&T, despite attorney’s advice

• Tweet
• Sumo

• Tweet

Miami City Commissioner Ken Russell was not able to get even a second on his motion to fire City Attorney Victoria Mendez Thursday.

Russell had made the move to terminate Mendez because he said she intentionally withheld emails that he had asked her for. He said the 26 emails not provided to him painted a different picture than the ones he got when he made the same request of IT — which was that Mendez was helping a developer get approval for a lot split in Coconut Grove to build five houses on one property. He said he lost trust in the city attorney.

But as if that wasn’t enough, he also mentioned another instance in which Mendez made him uncomfortable — when she advised him to get a cell phone services that would help him avoid having to make his text messages public.

“My very first week in office, in my very first meeting with Ms. Mendez, her first advice to me was which phone company I should use because it erases your text messages sooner,” Russell said at the meeting.

“It’s Sprint by the way.

“And my heart sank because this is not what I wanted to hear from the city attorney,” said Russell, who added that he stuck with AT&T.

Which made Ladra wonder who uses Sprint. So I asked. And the answer is nobody. Unless Commissioner Frank Carollo uses the service provider, because he was the only one that couldn’t be reached over the weekend.

Commissioners Willy Gort, Keon Hardemon and Francis Suarez each said they, too, use AT&T.

Certainly not what Ladra expected.

It seems odd that everybody would ignore the city attorney’s advice, but Suarez — who has been critical of Mendez on other professional issues — also said that the city attorney had never advised him to use a particular cell phone company.

“She’s never said anything remotely similar to me like that,” he said.

He wouldn’t go as far as calling Russell a liar.

“I don’t think he’s a dishonest person. I also don’t think she’s a dishonest person. We get told a lot of things,” Suarez said.

And since he uses AT&T, whatever he gets told in text, stays put for longer.

  Francis Suarez, Ken Russell, Victoria Mendez, Willy Gort